


Comfort for the Soul

by serenbach



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bilbo Remains In Erebor, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-09 07:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8881027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenbach/pseuds/serenbach
Summary: A year after the Battle of Five Armies, Bilbo and his daemon have settled in Erebor. It might have taken him some time to adjust to the difference between their peoples, but he is happy there, if a little homesick for Bag End in winter.Unknown to him, however, Thorin and Dwalin, and their daemons, have decided to do something about that.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [issaro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/issaro/gifts).



> Have a happy hobbit holiday, Issaro! Hope you enjoy!

The view from Bilbo’s terrace garden was usually stunning. A year after the death of Smaug the Desolation was healing, and the lights of Dale could usually be spotted glowing in the distance.  

However, it was winter. The afternoons darkened early and there was the threat of another snowfall in the air, meaning that nothing at all could be seen in the lands around Erebor and the lights of Dale were muted and dim.

Despite the snow, Bilbo was not cold, at least not unpleasantly so. His balcony was sheltered from the wind, and the snow did not settle there, kept at bay by the little brazier that Thorin had made him and Dwalin ensured was well lit throughout the day. With his thick, dwarf-make coat, woollen hat, gloves and mittens (courtesy of Ori) and with his daemon Myrtaceae tucked into his waistcoat, he was more than warm enough to sit out and take a breath of air. As he’d learned from the previous winter in the Mountain, he would have to make the most of what time he could spend outdoors while he could. The next snowfall promised to be a heavy one, and no one would be leaving the Mountain.

As one of Thorin’s as yet uncrowned consorts, his days were very busy (usually involving being nice to elves on Thorin’s behalf), but he’d managed to keep this afternoon free. He’d spent the time preparing his garden for the onslaught of winter, covering up the beds and protecting the seeds he’d planted for the spring. Most of his flowers and fruits had died or been harvested, his trees were bare, and the hardy ornamental grasses were the only remaining colour to be seen, and they should be able to last the winter. His work was done, but Bilbo lingered on the stone bench he’d found overturned in a corridor and that Dori had very kindly cleaned and dragged outside for him, breathing in the cold air deeply.

Bilbo was happy in Erebor. He was, as was Myrtaceae. They had grown to love it far more than ever expected when they had first slipped through the secret door (even discounting the presence of a dragon) when it was dark, and cold, and empty.

Erebor was none of those things now. It was warm and well-lit, with furnaces and fires, lamps bringing light and mirrors reflecting it throughout the Mountain, so that the elaborate carvings and beautiful décor could be clearly seen. It was no longer empty either, but filled with busy, industrious dwarves bringing it back to its old glory, and who generally, after a short period of giving him strange looks, accepted him as one of them.

It was also nice for his daemon to be accepted without question. In the Shire, a fox daemon, even one as round and fluffy as Myrtaceae, was only _just_ within the bounds of respectability, and indeed had been the only slight tarnish to his reputation when Myrtaceae had settled forms in his late tweens. They had been the focus of intense speculation and rumour for a short time, until it became clear that, fox or otherwise, he was a typical Baggins, predictable and reputable in every way.

(He didn’t know what his neighbours would say about them now. Or rather he did, and he didn't care one little bit.)

Myrtaceae’s teeth, which were seen as being unusually sharp and dangerous in the Shire, were nothing compared to some of the daemons in Erebor. Here, no one raised an eyebrow to see a fox trotting at his heels or being carried in his arms, which made a refreshing change.  

In truth, Erebor was his home now, and he was more than content with that. Even if he hadn’t grown to like the Mountain itself, the fact that his loves lived there would have made it home.

Erebor was his home, and he was happy, but winter this far east felt very long indeed, and as he sat in the fast approaching twilight, it was easy to think of the Shire, and Bag End. At this time of year, the winter flowers would be well in bloom, and hobbits would be gathering greenery to make into garlands for Yule celebrations. Bag End would be warmly lit with candles and a cheerful fire in the hearth, and it would be decorated with wreaths and the ornaments he had made with his parents long ago, and smelling deliciously of all the food he would be preparing for the Yuletide feast.    

He wasn’t sad, exactly, but he was perhaps a little homesick.

“It’s alright to miss it,” Myrtaceae pointed out, sticking her nose out of his waistcoat. “It doesn’t mean that you would rather be there than here.”

“I know,” Bilbo replied, reaching down to stroke her ears, comforting them both. “I know.”

“There you are!” Dwalin announced loudly from behind him, and Bilbo startled, only to feel Thorin’s steadying hand between his shoulder blades, though he was in no danger of toppling from the bench. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“Here we are,” he agreed, leaning back into Thorin’s touch, as Mafarrakh landed on his shoulder and preened his hair, and Khuhajhurm leaned her heavy weight against his leg companionably, and the familiar weight of his lovers’ daemons was a comfort to him.

\---

The first and most obvious difference that Bilbo noticed between the daemons of hobbits and the daemons of dwarves was the _size_ of them.

Most of their daemons were much larger and much more dangerous than any that would be found in the Shire (though not all, Ori’s dormouse and Bombur’s squirrel would not have been out of place at a hobbit’s side, Nori’s stoat may have been small but also looked fierce, and while Bofur’s spaniel was large she was undeniably friendly) and they all left Bilbo feeling very overwhelmed as his dining room filled up with dwarf after dwarf, all carrying weapons, and most accompanied by enormous creatures.

Dwalin, for instance, had a mastiff daemon that was almost half the size of Bilbo himself, and looked more dangerous than any of Farmer Maggot’s dogs. Thorin’s raven daemon, while not a million miles away from the type found in the Shire, was larger than any raven he had ever seen, with keen eyes and a sharp beak.

(He found out later of course that he was a Raven of Erebor, not the kind that could be found in the woodlands of the Shire.)

But Thorin and his raven dismissed Bilbo and his fox in a single glance, leaving him almost as annoyed with them as he’d been with the rest of his Company while they tossed his dishes around.

They’d both been more drawn to Dwalin and Thorin than afraid or annoyed, though, even in that first meeting,

\---

“It’s getting dark,” Thorin pointed out after a short while of silent company.

“So it is,” Bilbo agreed amiably, hiding his smile. Both of his dwarves were vibrating with barely contained impatience that suggested that Bilbo was about to discover whatever it was they had been working on to surprise him with.

He had become quite good at spotting the signs, since _subtle_ was not a word he would use to describe either of his loves. When they had made this garden as a courting gift, for example, they had come up with increasingly desperate excuses to stop him from exploring what he had assumed to be some sort of storage room leading from their quarters, from Dwalin claiming it was full of spiders (“worse than Mirkwood?” Bilbo had asked him pointedly, “or _Smaug_?”) to Thorin literally scooping both him and Myrtaceae up in his arms and taking them to bed as a distraction.

Which he had no objections to, obviously, but still.   

Bilbo generally prided himself on the fact that when he arranged some sort of gift or surprise for his loves, they were actually _surprised_. This time, however, they had actually managed to restrain themselves, and he had no idea what they had been planning.

“Aren’t you cold?” Thorin tried again, his impatience barely hidden.

Bilbo shook his head. “The brazier you made is keeping me more than warm enough,” he replied, watching Thorin’s expression flicker between pleasure at the compliment to his craft and frustration that Bilbo was staying where he was.

“Would you come inside already,” Dwalin huffed, and Bilbo laughed. Myrtaceae wriggled her way out of his coat and nuzzled affectionately against his hand.

“Myrtaceae, tell him,” Khuhajhurm rumbled next to him, and Dwalin’s hand dropped down to his own daemon’s shoulders.

“I suppose it is getting dark,” Myrtaceae answered for them with false reluctance, and Mafarrakh fluttered down next to her, playfully nudging her with his wings as he landed.

“Lead the way,” Bilbo announced, sliding off the bench and stretching, his back clicking in a very satisfying way. He had stiffened up more than he’d thought, sitting out in the cold, and he was quickly ushered inside, and helped out of his outer clothing by quick, if wandering hands.

His stomach rumbled, and there was laughter in response. “It’s a good thing we planned on feeding you,” Thorin told him affectionately, and ushered him towards the door.

He followed Dwalin and Thorin out of the door, Myrtaceae cradled in his arms, but they didn’t lead him to the dining room in their quarters, where they usually ate unless there was some kind of formal event on, and Bilbo’s curiosity was piqued.         

“Where are we going?” he asked, but there was no reply aside from Dwalin and Thorin murmuring to each other too quietly for him to hear. He exchanged a glance with Myrtaceae, and followed Mafarrakh as he fluttered ahead, and let Khuhajhurm herd him around corners, eager to find out what they had been up to.

\---

Another thing that Bilbo took time to adjust to was how free their daemons were with each other. Hobbit daemons did not touch each other, beyond basic care for the young or ill. The daemons of fauntlings would play and chase each other, of course, but they never made contact with each other. It was just unseemly.

Dwarven daemons, on the other hand, would spar and roughhouse as much as their dwarf did, meaning that Myrtaceae spent much of the first few weeks sitting between his feet with her ears back and her tail tucked around her body, safely out of range of any of their play. He wasn’t scared of the dwarves or their daemons – they had given him absolutely no reason to be, after all – but he did feel very out of place among them. And strangely, he felt very alone.

It didn’t last long, of course. In Rivendell, perhaps due to the troll incident, Fili’s mountain lion and Kili’s wolf coaxed Myrtaceae into joining in with their games. Bofur and his spaniel weren’t far behind, and most of the other dwarves seemed to warm to them as they began to cross the Misty Mountains.

Dwarves _were_ like hobbits in one way though – they did not touch each other’s daemons.

It was Bilbo who broke that taboo first.

\---   

“Close your eyes,” Dwalin ordered, as they stopped outside a room that the Company occasionally used when they were all getting together. Bilbo could hear the restrained excitement in his voice.

Both he and Thorin were as giddy as tweens before a birthday party. Their excitement was infectious, Khuhajhurm was wagging her tail so hard her whole body was wriggling, and Mafarrakh was ruffling his feathers impatiently. Myrtaceae was sitting up in Bilbo’s arms; her ears pricked forward, whiskers quivering.

“Alright,” Bilbo said, not able to stop smiling. “My eyes are closed.”

Thorin and Dwalin put a hand on each of his shoulders, and led him into the room. There was a hastily stifled burst of sound, one that tended to occur whenever the Company was trying to keep quiet, and Bilbo’s smile grew wider.

“Open them now,” Thorin said, his voice velvet soft at Bilbo’s ear.

Bilbo opened them, and gasped.

There were wreaths and garlands strung around the walls, and fireplace, and the edges of the shelves and tables. There were colourful ribbons tied in intricate designs in-between the greenery. The room glowed with candlelight, and there was a feast on the table, a dwarven version of all his favourite seasonal treats.

“You made me a Yuletide dinner,” Bilbo whispered, surprised and touched. He didn’t think he would be heard over the cheers of the Company before they started unceremoniously helping themselves to the food. “But I never mentioned it.”

He was hugged quite firmly between two strong, broad chests. “You didn’t have to mention it,” Dwalin told him.

“You spoke often about Yule last year,” Thorin added quietly.

This time a year ago, Thorin had been hovering between life and death, dipping in and out of consciousness; and Mafarrakh with him, while he and Dwalin watched, unable to do more than dampen his brow, and change his bandages, and _talk_ to him. Bilbo had talked endlessly to Thorin, about his nephews’ recovery, about Erebor, about Dwalin, about his hopes for the future and about anything else that came to mind, while Myrtaceae curled around Mafarrakh, as if she could hold him to life, and Khuhajhurm watched protectively over them all.

He must have spoken about Yule in the Shire to them then, meaningless chatter to fill the silence and to keep the fear at bay. He could not recall another time he would have brought it up. Apparently, even though Thorin’s delirium, and Dwalin’s dread, they had listened to him.

And remembered. And thrown him a Yule celebration of his own, just as winter and his homesickness was setting in.

Bilbo turned in their arms, Myrtaceae jumping down to nuzzle at Khuhajhurm and Mafarrakh, who was resting on the big dog’s head.

“Thank you,” he exclaimed, pressing fervent kisses against bristly cheeks. “Thank you so much.”

He could feel them smile against his head as they held him closer. If Bilbo’s eyes were a little wet from happy tears, they didn’t seem to mind.

\---  

Neither orcs nor goblins had daemons. The old stories said that the orcs had been made when the first dark lord severed the daemons from his elven captives, the loss of their outer soul making them ruthless and violent, but whatever the truth, Bilbo was more scared of their lack of daemons than anything else. It was _wrong_ in a visceral way he could not explain that shook him deeply.

Myrtaceae was tucked safely inside his shirt as he clung to the tree, since his waistcoat was ruined, but not all the dwarves were so fortunate. The bigger daemons, the ones who could not climb, or fly, or be carried, were gathered at the base of the trees, and they were doing their best to defend them by throwing flaming pinecones at the wargs and goblins that got too close.

Ori managed to hit the warg that snapped at his eldest brother’s badger in the eye, and Bifur’s ram was doing a good job of defending itself from goblins, but Bilbo knew that they would not last long.

That is when Thorin leapt from the tree, his daemon wheeling above his head, and charged at the white orc. Bilbo saw him get knocked to the ground, the big raven twitching before falling still. He saw Dwalin fight to free himself from the branches of the tree and his daemon struggle to get close enough to help, but Thorin was too far away, and his daemon couldn’t reach.

Bilbo dropped from his tree, and sprinted as fast as he could to stand before Thorin, his blade out, a goblin dead before he could think about it, and Myrtaceae leapt out from his shirt to stand above the fallen bird, teeth bared and bushy tail standing out on end.  

Bilbo barely had time to realise he was going to die before the rest of the dwarves intervened, and the eagles came. They picked up Thorin in their talons, and Dwalin’s mastiff carefully picked up the raven in her mouth before they were gathered up and carried away.

Later, in Beorn’s garden Bilbo and Myrtaceae relaxed in the sun, relishing the feeling of being _safe_ for the first time since Rivendell. Myrtaceae was sprawled out in the clover, and Bilbo was absently considering joining her (and only the thought of ruining his already ruined shirt held him back) when Thorin limped into the garden to sit next to him, Dwalin a few steps behind.

“Are you well?” Bilbo asked and where not that long ago the question would have probably been ignored or dismissed, he nodded.

The nod looked a little stiff, and behind him, Dwalin rolled his eyes, clearly disagreeing, but not contradicting him. They sat either side of him, Dwalin’s mastiff stretching out, paws almost touching Myrtaceae, and Thorin’s raven fluttered to the ground from his shoulder, and landed close to Bilbo’s hand.

Without thinking, or at least thinking only of how limp and lifeless the raven had looked not that long before, Bilbo reached out and touched him.

The touch lasted for a brief second, long enough for Bilbo to snap back his hand in horror, both at what he had done, and the fact that it hadn’t felt terrible at all. Myrtaceae jolted up as if she had been shocked, eyes wide, staring them both.  

But Thorin seemed surprised, though not angry, and Dwalin amused, and if anything the raven moved closer to his hand.

“You are bolder than I expected,” Thorin said, a strange smile on his face.

“Thorin,” Bilbo stammered apologetically, still shocked at himself.

“Do hobbits not touch each other’s daemons, then?” Dwalin asked, still smiling, though there was something a little… wistful in his expression.

“No,” Bilbo answered, confused, but his heart calming now that Thorin wasn’t angry. “Do dwarves?” he asked. He hadn’t seen any sign of that among the Company.

“Not every dwarf, no,” Thorin said, “but it is not unheard of to touch the daemon of your _kurdu_.”

“Your heart,” Dwalin added, his expression more open than Bilbo had ever seen.

Bilbo couldn’t help but make a noise of surprise, and the two dwarves exchanged a glance over his head.

“We may not have been as… welcoming to you as we should have been,” Thorin began, and Dwalin snorted. “But we have come to see what we should have done from the start.”

“You are our _kurdu,_ ” Dwalin told him, serious and earnest, his mastiff creeping closer hopefully.    

Bilbo hesitated, thinking of every moment he had felt something he assumed was hopeless, then reached out, his hand already missing the feel of the raven feathers under his fingers. Thorin’s raven leaned into his touch and the mastiff rested his head on his thigh, and Bilbo was overwhelmed with both their happiness, and his own. The daemons whispered their names to him as he touched them, and Bilbo knew that, for dwarves, sharing their names was almost as intimate as this touch.

Myrtaceae came closer, nervous but wanting, and the dwarves caressed her ears and tail, whispering endearments to her until Bilbo’s face was as red as Myrtaceae’s fur. It felt  _wonderful,_ a closeness that he had never known, or dreamed of.

He wondered if anyone else knew about this, if it was just too intimate to share. He knew that he would never be able to find the words to describe it to anyone else, or ever want to touch someone else’s daemon.

Later, after Mirkwood and the party in Lake town, after he had vouched for Thorin and he’d looked at them with those eyes, and Dwalin had clapped an approving hand on his shoulder, he woke up cradled between them, their daemons in a comfortably tangle, and in that moment Bilbo knew that if anywhere was home for him, it was with the ones he loved.

\---

Later that night, after Bilbo had stuffed himself silly at the feast like he would have done at any Shire feast and retired to bed, he lay in his favourite spot between his two dwarves, tracing the tattoos on their arms and chests. 

Myrtaceae was snuggled between Thorin and Dwalin, their hands absently stroking her ears and bushy tail. Khuhajhurm sprawled across all three of their legs and Mafarrakh was perched on the bedhead above them, eyes closed in a deep contentment.  

“You do know we’re happy here, don’t you?” Bilbo asked, not far from sleep, but feeling like it was important to say. 

“We know,” Dwalin replied, a heavy hand coming to rest in Bilbo’s curls, his voice rumbling so deeply Bilbo could feel it in his whole body.

“You do know we enjoy making you happy, though?” Thorin asked in return, and Bilbo laughed at Dwalin's suggestive gesture, and Thorin's resulting long-suffering look, completely content.

“How did we get so lucky,” Myrtaceae asked aloud. Khuhajhurm rumbled a laugh, and Mafarrakh cracked open one eye.

“We feel exactly the same,” he said.

Bilbo closed his eyes, and snuggled in tighter between them. They would probably always miss Bag End, a little, but here, in this mountain, in this room, in this bed, they were home.

And they were happy.         

**Author's Note:**

> In my probably wrong Khuzdul, Mafarrakh means (to carry) a heavy burden and Khuhajhurm means brave warrior. Myrtaceae is the Latin name for plants in the myrtle family, which I thought sounded suitably daemon-y. Bilbo and Dwalin's daemons are both female, Thorin's is male.


End file.
